Now this is what I call “cabin fever”
(New England Journal of Medicine - NEJM, 2004) Evidence of Airborne Transmission of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Virus
“...Residents of the floors at the middle and upper levels in building E were at a significantly higher risk than residents on lower floors; this finding is consistent with a rising plume of contaminated warm air in the air shaft generated from a middle-level apartment unit....”
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa032867
Bad
Getting 3,700 hundred people off a ship into single isolation rooms would be a massive task. Most hospitals only have a relatively few isolation rooms.
I honestly don’t know how they would facilitate a task like this.
I swear if I ever see an Antifa rally I’m going spread the idea through the crowd that they’re wearing masks because they have the Coronavirus. Then say that I’m getting out of there before they give it to me.
Nope...the ship itself is perfect isolation. Japan is right in handling it this way.
I’ll just chime-in with what I do know about these ships:
The entire crew (other than maybe the top officers) sleep ‘downstairs’ in cabins that do not have balconies, or even windows that open (and it makes sense to design the boat that way, if you want it to stay floating in all conditions).
A subset of passengers, by my rough estimate maybe 30% of them, either have inside cabins (no window), or have window cabins (but again, the windows don’t open). The rest of the passengers have balconies.
So, again, as a rough estimate, half of the people on that boat, maybe 1800 do not have access to continuous fresh air. I don’t know how air gets recirculated on a boat. I suspect quite a bit does, so as to keep down their fuel costs...and this is critical here. If they do have the capability to cut off recirculation of air, I sure as hell hope they’re doing that.
Now, about the balcony rooms. Not so great either, unless the passengers can figure out a way to sleep on the balconies and stay out of their cabins. Why? Because of a big, huge, air vent (as in 2 feet by 2 feet)...as far as I can remember, you can’t shut it off and trying to block it is probably futile (but you can hang clothes there to dry). You can control temperature - but that’s about it.
Needless to say, the killing off of aerosol viruses was likely never a part of their design - easy to beat them up over this, but was it really reasonable to believe a disaster like this could happen on a cruise ship? For other attacks/diseases, they actually do a good job (now) of keeping people protected (such as from the runs), but this one is new.
Anyway, having said that, I don’t think we’ll need to worry much about this happening in the future, once this wave of Coronavirus passes. The cruise ship companies, from what I can tell, have been working together to coordinate their response to Coronavirus (which makes some sense), but their attitude seems more like: we’ll do the minimum required, this will pass and things will get back to normal. What they SHOULD have done was simply park their boats and cancel future cruises until this is over (although they would have had to have been very pro-active to prevent the Japan situation). Things will NOT get ‘back to normal with them’, for years, if ever. I don’t know what it takes, but if UV kills off this virus, then they’ll have to put that in, and that won’t be overnight. Cruises in Asia are finished until at least then. Cruises in the rest of the world will be hit hard...but the total impact will depend on the spread of the virus, and whether more ‘Love Boat’ scenarios develop.
I notice stats are not being update with these figures as the JHU site still shows only 26 cases in Japan. Lots of lag, yet 40K infected.
I see there are a few cases now in India. If the virus spreads in India it will make China look like a minor incident.
Well put a couple thousand people in a tin can together and yeh stuff spreads.
Time to get everyone off that ship and into real isolation.
—
Yes. The authorities are essentially condemning them all to getting sick in the current situation.
Canadian TV News:
Life under quarantine on a cruise ship (14 hours ago)
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1695682115937
Shows interior, windowless cabin and plight of healthy people on board waiting to catch coronavirus.
A floating prison a solution does not make.
/yoda